The 50 worst-paying cities for construction workers

We live in a human-made world, which means that everything from the houses we live in to the roads we travel on were all built by construction workers. It's an important job -- one that our entire society depends on -- yet few workers earn a substantial income in the field.

As of 2016, the average salary for construction workers in the U.S. was $40,480, but in some markets, construction workers have earned close to $70,000 per year. It's estimated that one of the biggest factors affecting the average construction worker salary in each metro is that locale's cost of living.

CareerTrends, a career research site by Graphiq, used 2016 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to compile a list of the U.S. metro areas that pay their construction workers the least. To do this, the data team ranked metropolitan regions (as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget) by the average salary for construction workers in 2016. The list only includes the regions where construction workers earn less than $40,480 on average. When ties occur, metros are ranked by the total number of construction workers.

Florida is overrepresented, appearing 20 times on the list. While construction workers in certain locales make only 0.1 percent less than the national average, construction workers in the worst-paying location make almost half as much as the average.

Note: The salaries are not adjusted for the cost of living in each metro. Some metros do not report the total number of construction workers. When this occurs, "N/A" delineates that the data is not available.